, 1887-07-20
ART IDEAS IN DESSERT.

Days-Paper PIaythings, Etc.
A French epicurean writer says that
the dessert should be the browning tab
leau of the dinner. 1t should surprise,
estonish and dazzle. If the dinner has
fully satisfied the sense of taste and the
appetite, the dessert should address itself
to the soul, as it were, through the eyes
and rouse sensations of surprise and adj
miration and crown the enjoyments that
commenced with the removal of the cover
of the soup tureen.
The dessert of the middle ages had no
special character. There was a good
deal of Cellini cup and Limoges plate,
Palsy dish INC gold chased goblet about
it, and perfumes and spices in plenty.
The cake one can readily imagine to be
like wedding cake, quite heavy, full of
citron, and considered indigestible, and a
person can also imagine certain errors of
taste marring the whole affair, as in Ben
Jonson's time, when, at a lord mayors
feast, a b%eribboned dwarf Jester at a given
signal took a flying header into q large
bowl of custard, to the alarm, terror and
delight of the aldermen, court gallants
and the ladies, whose fine rufus and
slashed hose.of silk and satin must haye
been fearfully splashed and spotted. In
the times of the Medicis and Bartholo-
new massacre the French and Italian
mobiles had a queer custom of always car
rying about with them in the pockets of
their doublets costly little boxes filed
with bonbons, reminding one very much
of some good grandfather or uncle who
always has a peppermint in a bit of paper
tucked away in the far off corner of some
pocket. 1t was a childish custom, and
proves that the age had a sweet tooth and
4 n mora hnuioh tautn tLo- An-s t. ,-,,-
have been highly conducive to flirting
and may have been useful for diplomatic
purposes.
Robert May, in his cook book, expa-
tiates largely on the skill and art required
to build a large gilded ship of confection-
cry during the reign of James 1. Its
masts, cabins and portfolios all smart
and glittering, its bunting flying, its
fgurehead as bright as gold leaf could
make it. Its guns were charged with
actual powder, its cargo was two tur-
reted pies, one full of living birds, the
other of frogs. When borne in by gay
pages to the sound of music, the guns
were discharged, the ladies screamed and
tainted, SO much 80 as to require being
held W and consoled with sips of Tokay,
the g~allants all the while smiling and ap-
%plauding. After all this you may sup
pose they will desire to see what is in the
pies. The lids are lifted, and out come
frogs and flying birds, causing much de-
light and surprise to the whole company"
Such were the sports of Whitehall when
black browed old Rowley presided at the
table.
The house of Brunswick brought over
sound Professionalism, but German taste.
Cooking grew cumbrous and dull; a
naturalism became the fashion of the
German and French cooks of the eigh-
teenth century. Horace Walpole, great
about t%rifles, derided the new fashion in
dessert. Jellies, biscuit, sugar plums
and creams, simple and pleasant, had
given way to fashionable inanity, and
fashionable rusticity to harlequins, gon-
doliers, Turks, Chinese and shepherdesses
of Saxon China. These fantastic crea-
lures wandering about a dessert in a
meaningless way M dry, frizzly
groves of curled paper and silk flowers,
were soon discovered to be insipid.
Meadows full of spotted cattle, sugar cot
tages, pigmy and long tailed N~eptunes in
cookie shell cars domineering over oceans
Of looking glass and rumply seas of sill
yer tissue paper did not satisfy. Gradu-
ally Frederick, Prince of Wales, whose
companions were Desnoyess, the dancing
master, and Doddington, the toady,
began to deride these puppet shows that
figured in the center of the Burgundy
glasses and the dishes of macaroons.
TIL grandeur of size now struck these
pigmy handles. The confectioners as
pired to actual statuary; spindle legged
Venuses in affected pastures.
The dessert is allowed by all writers to
be of Italian origin. The maitre d'hotel
before the Italian dessert arrived gloried
in large dishes, mountains of fruit and
hills of sticky sweetmeats. The elegance
was clumsy and ostentatious; there was
no poetry in it. The newer fashion con-
sisted in those trees and shrubs and gar
dens alluded to by Walpole. F%renchmen
delighted in the sea of glasses, the flower
beds formed of colored sand and the little
men n women in sugar promenading
about. The sane garden first appeared
in France in 1725 at the marriage of
Louis XIV with Queen Mary of Poland.
Desforges was the first decorator Of those
days. He introduced imitation foliage
and gave a natural appearance to friz-
zled muslin. He was succeeded by De-
Lorme, who had not such p%rofundity of
imagination, yet he won many .~laurels,
and was followed by Dutfoy in 1905, who
immortalized himself by forming the
center of his dessert of palaces and tenn
pies of perfect taste and of vast extent.
Domes, cupolas, galleries in perspective,
elegant porticoes, columns and entabla-
lures were nodded by his ingenious and
skillful hands.
The appropriate attributes with which
he adorned his temples rendered mythol-
& an after dinner study at once agree
able and instructive. He almost gave
life to these extraordinary pictures by a
tasteful arrangement of light and shade.
He sought also the aid of the pyrotech-
mist, and that artist hurried to his succor.
He mixed harmless Chinese and scented
fireworks with his temples and Greek
shrines. In a moment the temples of
Dutfroy were the center of a whirl of
colored fires; a thousand globes darted
to the ceiling and shed their scented
sparks on the astonished and delighted
guests.-"M. r. H." in Boston Herald.